Author: Michael Folkson 2021-02-18 14:26:16
Published on: 2021-02-18T14:26:16+00:00
A recent discussion on the activation of Taproot, a Bitcoin upgrade, has raised concerns about the potential risks associated with soft forks. While the risk is not negligible, proponents argue that upgrades like Taproot offer significant benefits to the network and should be pursued despite the possible risks. The main concern is that different implementations may have different consensus rules, leading to a chain split and loss of consensus in the system. To mitigate this risk, some suggest releasing both options and allowing the network to decide. Others recommend setting LOT=false in protocol implementations such as Bitcoin Core to minimize the risk of chain splits.Despite the debate, mining pools have pledged support for Taproot, and even in the worst-case scenario, it would only cause short-term disruption and wouldn't kill Bitcoin long-term. The recent Bitcoin Taproot meeting was challenging, with both LOT=true and LOT=false arguments being discussed, although there was no overwhelming consensus for either. The full conversation log is available along with a summary provided by Luke Dashjr on Mastodon. Despite only around 100 people attending the meeting, it seems that there was more strong opposition to LOT=true than support, with some contributors and developers opposed to it in previous discussions. Based on this assessment, proposing LOT=false appears to be the only option if they are to finalize Taproot activation parameters and propose them to the wider community.A code review of the Bitcoin Core PR #19573 has been planned for Tuesday February 23rd at 19:00 UTC on the IRC channel ##taproot-activation.
Updated on: 2023-06-14T18:01:06.059745+00:00